a single flag a single parliament but now less than twenty years on it's kind of obvious that it's most unlikely to happen so why are these large scale plans for what is tearing our countries apart. historically we came up with a treaty that saw the creation of the union state of belarus and russia now if you actually look it up you'll see that it lays down a clear plan of action to build this union state listing all the key elements needed like the single currency and common institutions well there is a very detailed blueprint we were also supposed to draft a new constitution and hold a referendum on it however we never did this last bit there was no constitution or a referendum overall we have made significant headway over the past years although we have not been able to deliver on what was else out in the treaty we have come to realize that perhaps we are not ready for yet that is not the time or there is still one great upside our joint efforts towards

a union states would lead to the creation of a new organization the customers don't you know which in turn bought about a common economic space and we are now working to transform it into the eurasian economic union. would you agree with those analysts who say that's an attempt to restore a mini version of the soviet union. you can of course compare it to the soviet union or the european union or any other union regardless of which one exactly you pick as a reference point we can support the trend or see the world is seeing a global integration process with new unions emerging across the planet take for example or merkel in latin america i just returned from venezuela there are many more examples of this trend new organizations emerge to survive in this competitive environment why shouldn't we use the positive experience of the soviet union in fostering our relationship now if we look beyond russia. you were very close to

chavis he was a figure who united a group of world leaders in challenging the west and western corporations now that he's gone what is the future of this alternative movement. i would not say that chavez united us simply because it's so difficult to do i first realized that when we became part of the nonaligned movement that there are so many forces including united states trying to win these nonaligned countries over to their side to drive a wedge into the movement hugo chavez worked hard to unite developing states its contribution is really great and i was lucky to have worked with him on this track however we have not been able to overcome the centrifugal forces even in the nonaligned movement due to various reasons so i would not overestimate our efforts and say that we and hugo chavez in particular made huge progress in that area nevertheless he shook up latin america almost all the leaders there are left wing

and they all came to pay their last respects to chavez this is a very clear proof of his legacy of when he is gone he set it going to latin america now boasts unique in strong leaders take ecuador's korea for example he is an economist an intellectual a very powerful personality take the women presidents in brazil in argentina they're quite active too i won't go as far to say that this process has become irreversible but it will impact the whole world as well as latin america you can't just ignore it similar trends can now be observed in africa asia and other regions of course the contribution of charges was significant but you shouldn't overestimate it what i mean is that this movement for freedom independence and justice will not wind down now that he's gone no way but of course his role was essential as a sewer me of what. it would take venezuela chavez. it's not the only popular think

that there are one or two key opposition think it is well known to the world that if we take values it's only look at who's in the spotlight so later you'll have to hand over the power to somebody else how will that happen. it's a good immune response to be honest i never think in these terms i swore that i will never hand over the power to my relatives to my in-laws or children it's out of the question but the bottom line is that you need to win a fair election to get power and i remember that i won my first poll as an opposition candidate it was a fair win just like all of the following elections was won i've always played by the rules and i want people who come to power after me to do the same to win an election in a fair way so you are not grooming anyone as your successor is the only i've decided for myself that i will not even support anyone publicly so it must be conducted in a fair way the people should elect their leader themselves when the time is right.

i remember that during your summit visit to venezuela when chavez was still alive he said we have a great holiday today our guests are president focused on his son and you told him he was right in mentioning the boy because we need someone who will continue of course someone we can pass the baton to twenty twenty five years from now i didn't say pass the baton i said carry on our cause i do remember it very well and i said it in a very responsible way when i say carry on it doesn't mean he would just take the helm and go into the president's chair we have a million boys like junior and it's them who will continue the cause we should look at schenker because some time ago they will continue the work that i have been doing now here's what's on my record better use has become a sovereign and independent state for the first time in our history has retained its independence which. decades this is the biggest accomplishment of the work done

by my cabinets and i we have created all the attributes of a state this except for a border with russia but we don't need it for the time being russia doesn't lay claim to our lands that we don't see is a problem or not apart from that all the major institutions in components that make a state a state there are many generations have grown up since and more will grow up young people like jr will grow up so there will be people who continue all cause frankly i didn't mean my son you must be thirty five to even qualify as a presidential candidate so if you look thirty years from now i'd be almost ninety if not even if i wanted to make a career in politics will you support his choice. he is free to choose his profession but i would like him to become a politician he's eight now and he's seen enough of his father's presidency he's never had this idea that he would be president because his father was president so

i never bring up this issue at home that's not a topic to discuss with children that's for my grown up sons they're pretty straightforward about it so we've had enough of your presidency they tell me so we never talk of a power handover with them and generally i never talk about it anywhere else why should i i'm still alive and kicking so i think i can carry on for some time. correct me if i'm wrong i have here a quote of yours that you said i'm horrified at the thought that the belle of russian wealth that i have toiled so hard to create and preserve would be auctioned off did you mean by russian assets would be sold off when you are gone you're the one yes that's something i am afraid of how does it happen that the system you have set up is so fragile that it will collapse immediately after you've gone. i didn't mean the better reese would collapse as a state what i meant was state property the enterprises that underpin the economy agriculture which we have upgraded and you have to go back to. in the time when i

first became president it was a time when we couldn't feed our own people we had empty shelves and there was no food on the table as i say today we have plenty of food for our people and our prices are much lower than in russia or ukraine or the uses today we export five billion dollars worth of produce annually we have invested a lot of money into two major upgrades in agriculture. new people in power decide to sell it off various face disaster i don't want our industrial enterprises or companies working in other sectors to be auctioned off for a penny i would like bell aris to be run by a man who will not go to extremes bode rather continue this cause domestic policy should be in line with the will of the people and the way of life which will emerge at that time not only in better use but in the whole world. how seriously do you regard your political opponent for example those who also ran in the twenty ten presidential election with just

a cheerful hope it is to be honest i don't take them seriously these elections revealed who they really are so we had ten alternative candidates they only scored one point five to two percent well that's their score ok they might complain they were at a disadvantage or right let's say five percent so how am i supposed to take them seriously if they come out and preach such nonsense that people don't even accept it we didn't shut them down they preached their ideas on air even when they violated the constitution and called on everyone to take hayfork and crush the regime only one hundred people came to the central square and they included four hundred permanent opposition activists that's it and then they really set out to crush the government building where you often say democracy in belarus is just as good as in america or europe absolutely who should probably have to kowtow to your will absolutely. it's just as good trust me i can prove it right here right now

that there is no dictatorship in belarus shall i very simply in just a few words this is the argument i used to convince my western partners in order to be a dictator like starlin one has to have the resources resources of paramount's you need to understand that i have any nuclear weapons exactly i do not do i have as much oil as hugo chavez did in venezuela no no i have as much natural gas as russia . and so on and so forth do i have so many people as china does one point five billion people would know the words in order to be a dictator in dictate one's will one has to have the resources economic social military relation and so on we have none and i am being objective about it i am telling you that we have no claims of global importance and don't see ourselves

solving major global problems we don't have the resources to do so what we want to do is find our place in the sun and live as an average civilized european state that's all i want. what you were so it's almost all well if that's the way you see it is how come no other significant political figure has appeared on the political scene and valorous over the last nineteen years. that's probably because the current leader is strong enough and you don't see any others in his shadow i know want to sound immodest until this question is not for me to answer of course we have what you call the opposition i call them the fifth column because they work for the benefit of someone other than their own country and they promote the agenda of those who finance them is acceptable or kind of people would support such opposition but you shouldn't worry the time will come and we'll have a new leaders.

they've been living this way since the seventeenth century. their rituals are strict. their communities on the silicon. they clearly distinguish between their own and the alien. and guard their family and things as a treasure. and when their own country can't offer them a living even loving mothers sometimes have to leave their children behind. i don't

like to read just a bed longer. is the dream of millions of migrants that their children might choose their own motherland. i want my children to win over moscow. russia has become this step motherland. migrants working hard to find a way home. thank

you. mr president you know all too well the list of things european union holds against you so i'm not going to repeat them now no more so than if you are in my don't know all those i do know them very well that's certainly true yet will i be as well by you and so does everyone a lack of political pluralism freedom of speech and so on and so forth it's a long list but what i would like to ask you is why do you think you are persona non-grata there was little here you go a little wooden soul when you know i visited venezuela recently and i had some time to think i did some reading on allies things and i thought of it as if i were debating with the americans and the west in general so i say. persona non-grata for you need to know he meant tree you also deny entry to both my eldest son's and even my youngest who is just

a little boy what wrong could he have done does he have anything to do with the alleged reeking of elections all of my children are completely excluded from the election process how can they possibly just label them whatever it is they labeled that something bad obviously and simply panel from the european union if they care about human rights why do they abuse the human rights of my citizens so i can understand why they don't want to put up with. i can tell you the reason why they don't is not because i'm a north or terria leader although that may be true and it's not because they call me a dictator well they used to no one has been calling me a north or a tarion or dictator for a while they used to call me that because they have been instructed to do so by the us but it took that. so why were. you asking why me you know when the new state of belle aris appeared on the map and claimed a place in the sun just like georgia another newly formed state those who'd already

been there didn't like it as they want about a place in the sun for themselves and now they had to move over and someone happy about it but that's not the real problem then it starts to go from bad to worse because shanker decides to take a hard stand for the state's independence while everyone wants a piece of what valorise has to offer in terms of the economy they didn't like me taking a stand and so they started calling me all sorts of things but next we do not choose the track of buildings a capitalist market driven economy where everything works around private property and you have to sell out the state's property into private ownership to make it work we don't do that we don't privatized everything some aren't happy about that we are a welfare state with a strong social policy the social a neck and. policies like this you are very different from what the west would want us to have next we do have a rigorous law enforcement system that wouldn't allow things like

a fist fight in parliament when power is divided between entities like the parliament and the government the president ends up with no power lies and it's easy then to pilate what happens in a state you can state fights and conflicts this backlash on the people behind all this you can lay your hands on some valuable assets privatizing before anyone knows it so they don't like it that they can't do it for freedom of speech of liberalism and other such things but that can't be serious how is it even possible not to have them with all the modern media around us there is no way for instance that russia today is a channel i have any influence on if you like it you can watch it anyone can and there is also the internet our analysts have calculated the fifty one percent of our active population active internet users how can i possibly keep their mouths shut i am more than anyone opposed to bans building repents is another such things

you can win the fight if you stay strong if you're weak you better stay out of the fight because you're only going to get yourself and your state chased into a corner so i don't want to sound like i'm being overconfident but i just want to say again i feel strong enough to fight and stand up to any attacks on me my family and my state my barry. speaking of which two years ago you said that germany and poland had conspired against belarus what conspiracy did you mean who was behind it but i do remember it was right before the election the german foreign minister came to visit it was a high profile visit as for going on i mean it was when the minister took your comment on his sexual orientation quite hard right on his being gay but why take it hard if that's what you are did you know he was gay when you gave. no i didn't i had no idea at that time my staff included it in the memo but i didn't finish reading the thought then why did you bring it up i didn't they did to cause it and

i simply responded he kept asking questions like moscow banned the gay pride parade would you ban it if your people wanted one i replied you know i probably would let them do it downtown is i have them parade somewhere on the outskirts let other people watch it maybe say something i basically don't mind lesbians but i definitely do mind the gays why because women turn gay only when we guys are not good enough and what did they say to that they didn't say anything they just listened i didn't even see the look on their faces when the scandal broke out after they left my foreign minister told me right after mr look if. you would have done better not to talk about that and why is that i asked and he said because he's one of them and i said why didn't you tell me earlier he said i sent you a memo i just never finished reading it what did that do in the relationship poured

oil on fire or pros will deal with them it wasn't about that they had previously approached me with basically a list of terms and conditions of the kind we'll be friends with you if you do this and that and that and that and i responded yeah i can do this and this and that i did most of the things they had required and that's exactly why i called them their requirements but they did nothing in return they simply found an excuse to talk themselves out of it the excuse being that incident when we dispersed that crowd of four hundred people actually tried to break into the government building there were a total of eight hundred four hundred runaway and the other four hundred stay and try to take out the doors of the entrance this was broadcast live how would any other country respond to that we didn't do anything like pool water on them or. this cold day december nineteenth we didn't used to gas we didn't show them or shoot rubber bullets at them as they do an e.u. countries we simply took measures to protect our government building and they use

it as an excuse to talk themselves out of keeping the promises they had given me that's what it was about and nothing else suit with class. you mentioned a few times at the start that you were previously called europe's last dictator i looked up and listened through a lot of materials to get ready for this interview and i can say that indeed ninety nine percent of the material i went through had the words europe's last dictator in them and if i understand it right he used it to refer to yourself ironically. exactly i can tell you how i did it i am to be interviewed by a western journalist and all that person knows about me is what you just mentioned that all these things that are published. is a dictator and even though he probably doesn't he people alive he definitely needs women so here they come for the interview sit quietly opposite me

a mention in passing the dictatorship thing sort of low key but what i always did was bring it out and talk openly about it i would tell them i'm being referred to as a dictator but you might have quite an autocratic leadership style which is defined by the system and. given it a thought why i chose this and built this kind of system when you think there will be probably a simple good reasons for it could you perhaps try and see a good solid reason behind it you see no one has ever tried to look at it this way no one try to understand what is very particular person has built such a strong autocratic system with which at the very least use results by the way so as for dictatorship i say to them you are very lucky to meet your last dictator alive in person the. remember it was that something you probably won't see again that's the kind of irony i used what scottish honestly doesn't hurt you do you not

care at all about what the west the u.s. and europe have to say about you know in fact i do care because that's not just about you it inevitably thanks to country's image right you are and you just said it correctly if you were only about me i would probably get hurt and say to hell with them but the thing is true that they are trying to hurt the entire nation the state so i can say i don't care at all although i should say i am not taking it too much to heart and when they say dictator dictator i feel sorry for those who actually believe it when they say it is they don't even know that they are deluded about their reality and the person they're talking about that's the only thing i really feel bad about. after which or what happened to lord bell whom you previously hired to help improve the image of valorous where the international community. is not the way it's being presented i won't go into all the details about lord he was recommended by the way i am adamantly against the idea although

many do it they try to improve their image with the help of p.r. people so it was the first and only time i agreed to meet a person who does some kind of work writing things and i never even went into detail as to what he does because we never paid him and he never charged us all he said was he wanted to talk and write something i said the word got out that it had to do with image promotion that probably came from him or someone else and it was then misrepresented as if president lukashenko had invited him to help push the country on to the right to vellum and track its image. so he was making a hard sell just like all i don't know either he or someone else young hollywood. i don't even believe in the idea of someone coming over changing your image just like that that's not something you can do even night it takes more than a month or even

a year changing your image takes a very long time changing your image and also takes more than just changing what others say about you that's certainly important but the key here other things you do the actions you take and that's something that can't be changed overnight. you know what else they said about that story with the one bell that he was introduced to you by a very soft is that true no he didn't introduce us lord bell arrived on his own but it's true the bear was also he was among those people who recommended him so there's a bit of truth in that a few days ago the director of national intelligence presented a report i'm forecasting a possible new crisis for belarus in twenty thirteen would you agree with this excess mint i mean i. want to say the same about america is i could put it this way the global community including behrooz may face a new economic crisis if it comes from its usual place of origin i.e. the united states the fact remains that europe has failed financially as that's

true a while and since europe accounts for half of our export turnover it's obvious that it's going to affect our economy our export turnover with russia is also declining a little bit although there's no crisis as such in russia yet and so it's true even more so for georgia bellary see crane in other states the kind of real sectors of economy they have with no oil or gas of their own and they need to pay high prices for them that of course is a problem for us when the entire world's economy is going down there we have some reserves of our own and we'll use them if the need arises we'll make it pretty sure the bushes are there just said during the latest crisis he resorted to requesting aid from the i.m.f. for instance chavez severed all ties with the i.m.f. and the world bank. it was the right thing for you when you were he had enough resources he had the world's biggest oil deposits ample natural resources he had all the reserves he needed why take loans and pay off interest. but he did request

aid from china britain secure he did as china maybe he did it for ideological reasons and china offered to help but obviously for a profit china is probably venezuela's number one investor and they invest in the sectors of economy they are interested in such as gold in oil or in this. so asking the i.m.f. was your last choice and you just couldn't help it and that's because they're imposing some political terms and bellows you're not welcome that's correct although that wasn't about the political terms it was about the tough economic terms they gave us but we managed to comply and overall they were right to do it of course it was tough on us but they in fact required us to implement the same measures we actually had to take up anyway and had already started implementing it when you run out of money what sense does it make to increase spending on welfare benefits to keep inefficient business is running and so on and so forth with their

approach was just to cut it all down ours was that is about the people involved and then we can't do it to them so abruptly so basically what they required was the same as what we did anyway the only difference was they wanted to do it right away while we were taking a steady approach and by the way the us supported our application for the loans without their involvement the i.m.f. wouldn't have given approval we successfully delivered on all the requirements are now paying off the debt and we took the cheapest loans possible so i can already tell you anything else about that charges probably refused to take loans because he had plenty of resources at hand and he probably also got loans in exchange for some future profits and benefits he could offer. i thank you very much for the interview please don't call me sir i am no lord it takes too much. money has become one thing mr look thank you very much for the interview my thanks to you for coming over to have a talk. a

clear image of iraq after inflation. twenty day taxi trip through the country. the roads full of danger. clear evidence from north to south. the route of iraqi tragedy. after the war waiting for peace. talks e l r t. well. science technology innovation all the list developments from around russia we've got.